Posted under Academia & Political Philosophy
Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has always been one of the more conservative of the anarcho-capitalists. I am not an anarcho-capitalist, and I have my disagreements with the latter parts of this essay, but his assessment of the state monopoly of intellectuals is right on.
“… how can one persuade the majority of the population to believe this? The answer is: only with the help of intellectuals.
How do you get the intellectuals to work for you? To this the answer is easy. The market demand for intellectual services is not exactly high and stable. Intellectuals would be at the mercy of the fleeting values of the masses, and the masses are uninterested in intellectual-philosophical concerns. The state, on the other hand, can accommodate the intellectuals’ typically over-inflated egos and offer them a warm, secure, and permanent berth in its apparatus.
However, it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. You must essentially employ them all, even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with: that is philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. For even intellectuals working in mathematics or the natural sciences, for instance, can obviously think for themselves and so become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you secure also their loyalty to the state. Put differently: you must become a monopolist. And this is best achieved if all educational institutions, from kindergarten to universities, are brought under state control and all teaching and researching personnel is state-certified.
… Has the work of the intellectuals paid off for the state? I would think so. If asked whether the institution of a state is necessary, I do not think it is exaggerated to say that 99 percent of all people would unhesitatingly say yes. And yet, this success rests on rather shaky grounds, and the entire statist edifice can be brought down if only the work of the intellectuals is countered by the work of intellectual anti-intellectuals, as I like to call them.” emphasis mine
We need intellectual anti-intellectuals inside and outside the system. Outside the system takes donors and/or a patron or patrons. Inside the system is another matter.
* I think paleoconservatives and anarcho-capitalist can agree on opposition to the modern (post French Revolution) state. We can also agree that Hobbes and his conceptualization of the state is a problem.
Andrew T. on 26 Jun 2008 at 10:01 pm #
Another great article, but Justin Raimondo:
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13046
Andrew T. on 29 Jun 2008 at 1:17 am #
http://mises.org/story/2874